San Francisco, CA — A 35-year-old woman who testified that a man beat her and forced her into prostitution appears to have advertised her services as a sex worker while being provided with over $2,000 in financial incentives, including hotel accommodations, by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.
In a screenshot obtained by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office Tuesday, the woman appeared to update her online advertisement on prostitution website MyRedBook.com March 16, when she was receiving ongoing financial support in order to testify at Anthony Dorton’s trial. The trial was set to begin in early March but was continued until July.
The woman’s March 16 advertisement lists her images and phone number and notes that she is available “tonight.”
Jurors acquitted Dorton July 25 of assault likely to cause great bodily injury, simple assault, criminal threats and dissuading a witness, said Dorton’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Qiana Washington. Jury members deadlocked on pimping and pandering charges. The District Attorney will decide Tuesday whether to retry the 23-year-old San Mateo man on the pimping and pandering charges.
“Continuing to pursue this case would be a travesty,” Washington said. “The complaining witness advertised her services as a prostitute while receiving financial incentives pending the trial including a city-funded hotel room, all the while planning to testify she was forced into prostitution. Mr. Dorton was in-custody at the time and could not have influenced or supported her prostitution activities in any way. This ad further exposes that the complaining witness manipulated the police and District Attorney’s Office into believing she was a victim when she was really the perpetrator.”
Dorton was arrested Sept. 19, 2011 after the woman told police he pulled her out of his car by her hair, grabbed her cell phone, threw her to the ground and punched her in the head following an argument. The woman had approached Dorton’s girlfriend on the street 11 days earlier, telling her she had been abused and prostituted by another man and was now homeless. Dorton’s girlfriend invited the woman to stay temporarily at the apartment she shared with Dorton and his younger brother.
The woman claimed Dorton, a recently laid-off cable installer with no criminal record, also forced her into prostitution. After an unpleasant encounter with a client in San Francisco, the woman said she called Dorton and asked him to pick her up and take her back to his residence to get her things. When Dorton refused, she threatened to call the police and “blow your whole world,” she said. Dorton then picked her up and drove her to a SOMA parking lot, where the attack took place, she claimed.
During the two week trial, the woman’s internet postings revealed a trail of lies and exposed her as a pimp. Washington confronted the woman with images of her Facebook page, in which the woman listed her profession as a self-employed “head pimptress in charge.” She further bragged of earning graduate degrees in the double majors of “Advanced Pimpin” and “keepin hoes in LINE!!!” The woman frequently wrote about supervising and punishing prostitutes in additional Facebook comments, Washington said.
Washington also presented audio recordings of the woman’s interview with police, in which she said, “A bad bitch always keeps a trick up her sleeve. (Dorton) doesn’t know that because he’s just a kid, you know.”
On the stand, the woman testified she never worked as a prostitute before arriving in the Bay Area recently and denied pimping other women.
During the trial, however, Washington presented several ads on prostitution websites showing the woman’s images and listing her cell phone number. One posting, advertising the services of a 17-year-old prostitute, lists the older woman’s number. On the stand, the woman admitted to taking explicit pictures of the teenager and fielding her calls, but denied she was her pimp.
Also introduced into evidence was a television news report about Occupy San Francisco, in which the woman falsely described herself to a reporter as an “out of work nurse on unemployment.”
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